Wednesday, November 02, 2011

e2v begins sampling in this quarter the ‘Ruby’ family of image sensors (EV76C660 and EV76C661), which is said to have sensitivity performance beyond that considered possible on traditional front side illuminated sensors, with a pixel size of 5.3µm. The reported QE is over 80% in visible spectrum and over 50% in NIR at 850nm. The sensors are targeting industrial and machine vision applications, as well as very low-light imaging in outdoor camera applications.

Hey guys, now that we do get some numbers, please do not complain too much about it ! A QE of 80 % in the visible is not that bad at all. I am pretty sure that my mobile phone camera as well as my digital SLR sensor do not show such a high QE. Question is whether this 80 % is the QE for the complete pixel or just for the diode ?

Well, I'm using the EV76C661 and it does have much higher dark current than previous "sapphire" line. I've seen a cam test of the *60 and it also looks very poor for (planetary) imaging in IR at high gain an bit longer exposures). Such high QE, but a lot of noise. Strong peltier cooling could probably help, but I don't know if that would limit the noise as much as needed.